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Having slapped Chinese company ZTE with a denial order which significantly hampered its US operations, President Trump has said that the firm will pay a $1.3 billion fine and change its board and management in order to continue to operate within North America. ZTE had complained that the denial order was unacceptable, and Trump has more recently indicated a desire to get the company "back into business". Now it seems that the president has come up with a deal that involves the Chinese telecoms firm not only making security guarantees, but also buying components from US companies. See also: Trump… [Continue Reading]

Apple has announced that it is to expand the scope of its twice-yearly transparency report. Starting with one of its next report -- the one which will cover the period July 1 to December 31, 2018 -- the company will share details of government app takedown requests. The announcement was tucked away in the latest transparency report, in which Apple shares details of "Government and Private Party Requests for Customer Information". The company says that it takes the protection of user data very seriously, and this addition to the report sees Apple demonstrating this by providing even more information. See… [Continue Reading]

It's just a couple of days since Microsoft temporarily disabled Windows 10 April 2018 Update on PCs running Avast antivirus. Just as with certain SSDs, a compatibility issue was making the update problematic. But now Avast says it has identified the issue and is working to push out an update to people that will avoid the problem. The company also has instructions for people whose computers have been left sitting in a blue screen state. See also: New Windows 10 update addresses problems with SSDs Microsoft blocks the rollout of Windows 10 April 2018 Update to computers with problematic Intel… [Continue Reading]

Despite being the default desktop environment for the two most important Linux distributions in the world -- Fedora and Ubuntu -- GNOME is not a money-making project. Actually, it is run by a non-profit called The GNOME Foundation that relies heavily on donations from both organizations and individuals. That's what makes GNOME so extraordinary -- the high quality desktop environment and apps are largely a labor of love. Today, The GNOME Foundation makes a shocking revelation -- a mystery donor has pledged $1 million dollars! We don't know who is promising the money -- it could be a rich man… [Continue Reading]